Pharmaceutical & Healthcare Leaders Collaborate to Improve the Patient Journey

HUNTINGTON BEACH, CA--(Marketwired - Oct 17, 2016) - Today, pharmaceutical industry leaders West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., Noble, Insight Product Development, and HealthPrize Technologies announced their continued collaboration to create a multisensory-based educational and training program for West's SmartDose^® technology platform.

"Noble is thrilled to work with West, as well as Insight and HealthPrize, to help improve the experience for patients who need to self-inject to receive treatment," said Craig Baker, Executive Vice President at Noble. "Through user research, human factors testing, device design and high-quality manufacturing considerations, we have found that providing patients with a complete set of tools to realize optimum outcomes, including training and onboarding, can help drive adherence motivation and monitoring."

Issues with patient adherence can cost the healthcare industry billions of dollars each year. Factors such as lack of training, fear and anxiety can all result in avoidance behaviors and treatment complications with injection therapies. Research findings published by Elsevier Science Ireland revealed that patients' fear of injections was associated with a decrease in patient adherence, with 45 percent of patients skipping or avoiding injections due to anxiety or fear. This anxiety can lead patients to improperly administer medications, impacting successful outcomes.

"Advancements in biologics coupled with the shift to patient self-care in the home setting has driven the need for self-injection systems," said Chris Evans, Vice President of Research & Innovation at West. "We work with customers and partners to optimize the experience of patients who self-inject in a way that increases affinity and fosters adherence to a treatment regimen. This collaboration with Noble, Insight Product Development and HealthPrize Technologies enhances our patient-centric approach to drug delivery systems."

Noble incorporates human factors principles into the development of patient training technologies and education materials, including instructions for use, onboarding, smart training devices and packaging. West is a global leader in developing innovative solutions for injectable drug containment and delivery, and currently markets several self-injection technology platforms to pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Insight provides user-centric research and design inputs, and Healthprize provides a Software-as-a Service platform to help improve patient adherence through motivation and education. By combining these offerings, the companies aim to help improve the patient experience, reduce errors and anxiety, and increase adherence to prescribed injectable therapies.

West and Noble will co-present the results of this end-to-end patient training solution, and the collaboration between West and each of the three other companies will be featured at the respective booths of each company at the annual PDA meeting.

About West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. -- www.westpharma.com

West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. is a leading manufacturer of packaging components and delivery systems for injectable drugs and healthcare products. Working by the side of its customers from concept to patient, West creates products that promote the efficiency, reliability and safety of the world's pharmaceutical drug supply. West is headquartered in Exton, Pennsylvania, and supports its customers from locations in North and South America, Europe, Asia and Australia. West's 2015 sales of $1.4 billion reflect the daily use of approximately 110 million of its components and devices, which are designed to improve the delivery of healthcare to patients around the world.

About Insight Product Development -- www.insightpd.com
Established in 1988, Insight is a Design Innovation Consultancy focused on the drug delivery and medical device sectors. Core capabilities include user-centered research, technology development and R&D and full device design and development for industrialization. Insight has extensive experience characterizing and prioritizing user needs through the execution of contextual research and human factors toward the complete understanding of the patient journey. This process has been the cornerstone of Insight's efforts to assist in the design and development numerous auto-injectors, wearable injectors, and inhalation devices for various customers.

About Noble^® -- www.gonoble.com
Noble works closely with the world's leading pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies to develop autoinjector, prefilled syringe and respiratory device training solutions designed to provide positive patient onboarding experiences, reduce errors and improve patient outcomes. Cross-disciplinary designers and engineers provide fully customized solutions from the first concept sketch through production, in both regulated and non-regulated environments. 

About HealthPrize Technologies -- www.healthprize.com
HealthPrize offers a powerful, flexible Software-as-a-Service platform that it utilizes to create unique consumer and health care provider experiences using gamification, behavioral economics and incentives, proven to increase engagement, adherence, loyalty and medical literacy. HealthPrize programs, across indications, demographics, and drug delivery methods, have consistently delivered superior patient engagement and adherence results, with an average of greater than 50% lifts in adherence.

West and the diamond logo are registered trademarks of West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc., in the United States and other jurisdictions.

SmartDose^® is a registered trademark of Medimop Medical Projects Ltd., a subsidiary of West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc.
West seeks partners for its SmartDose^® injector technology platform. This platform is intended to be used as an integrated system with drug filling and final assembly completed by the pharmaceutical/biotechnology company.